David Davenport of Forbes Magazine pointed out that student protests have built momentum recently. However, he warns:

But let’s be clear, these are not your father’s student protests from the 1960s. Today’s students are not protesting wars and American foreign policy, but rather perceived slights and injustices in their college experience. In other words, the students are stirred up about their own lives and campus climates. The “Million Student March” was about demands for free college tuition and the cancellation of student debt. (Thank you Bernie Sanders for creating those pie in the sky expectations.)

It’s a bit underwhelming when students protest their own conditions at luxurious campuses like Emory or Boston College, but the simplistic and selfish nature of their demands is even less impressive. The student protesters’ solution to high cost and debt is to make everything free. Their answer to problems in the campus climate is to fire the president. According to news reports, concern over statements by campus public safety officers and guest speakers at Ithaca made up the case for the president to resign. At Amherst, students merely called for the president to condemn an institutional legacy of racism, including the “inherent racist nature” of school mascot Lord Jeff.

We chronicled this exact concern at the University of Missouri.

In that incident, black students were “triggered” by an off-campus incident that nobody can even confirm.

The Forbes article continues:

But my biggest concern is that campus administrators are actually giving in to these intolerant and simplistic demands by resigning… And giving in to student demands so easily (which were disproportionate to the remedy of resignation in the first place) means nothing is learned, complex problems are not worked through; instead people just walk away.

Both students and administrators need to recall the fundamental premise of civil disobedience and protest. It is that the protesters find some policy or law so unjust that they are willing to violate it in order to challenge its legitimacy, but then also pay the consequences. Today’s students want to protest and disobey, but not pay any consequences—like the students at Missouri that were angry that a professor was actually going to give a scheduled test, rather than cancel it in favor of protesting. Fortunately some wise administrator refused to accept the professor’s tender of resignation over this incident.

In other words, we’ve created a monster.

Or a student body of monsters. Today’s colleges are filled with selfish entitled brats who look for ways to get more out the system without putting much in.

Wasting tuition dollars, one class at a time!

Unfortunately, parents send their kids off to college to develop skills for a brighter future. They expect their kids to learn something. Instead, the classes offered have zero value in the real world. “Creative Forms of Resistance” showcases a waste of tuition. However, there are many more:

“The Literature of 9/11” is a class offered at several universities. Instead of focusing on the first responders, heroes, or the victims of that fateful day, students learn to sympathize with terrorists.

Georgetown University offers the “Philosophy of Star Trek,” because, you know, Star Trek is completely philosophical.

This represents far from a complete list.

But the point is these classes don’t prepare young adults to be valuable players in society. These classes amplify leftism. Why learn finance when you can study Gaga’s outfit? Or why study Ethics when you can examine Kanye West? Does anyone really believe the “Philosophy of Star Trek” will lead to the next million-dollar idea? Probably not.

But this is how we teach our kids not to learn a damn thing. We breed institutionalized ignorance.